by Ron Hall
Those were sometimes lonely days for Deborah. In Dallas, she had a tough time finding friends who were willing to venture deep into spiritual waters. Most people (including me) were happy to watch from the shore. Some braved the shallow end on occasion, but most were afraid of getting in over their heads.
When we first arrived in town, Deborah wanted to pray for our children, Regan and Carson, and all their classmates and the teachers in the school, so she started a weekly prayer group and invited all the mothers in Carson’s grade. I remember how puzzled Deborah was that several women in our neighborhood seemed hesitant about the invitation. Many times, nobody showed up at all.
“Why would anyone not want to pray over their kids?” she asked me one day.
Later, I heard through the grapevine that most people were a little afraid of Deborah’s intimacy with God. They were especially afraid because she invited them to do the scariest thing of all: pray with her out loud.
To tell you the truth, even I felt intimidated when praying with her. Deborah prayed with such passion—not like some nut-ball holy roller but with such knowledge of the Father as though He was her daddy and she was His favorite child. Without pausing or stumbling, she let her words flow like a psalm or a sonnet. Captured on canvas, her prayers would be considered masterpieces, like a Rubens or a Caravaggio. And yet her prayers were not artful, as though she meant to impress. Instead, she would simply remind God of His own promises in Scripture and, in an inexplicably reverent way, sort of shake Him by His lapels when she thought He really ought to get moving on a particular project.
There was a depth, an intensity, a beauty to my wife’s prayers, as if she had boldly stepped into a rare inner circle of divine light that others dared only regard from a distance. And in the beginning, that irritated me. It was as if she was so spiritual that she wasn’t being real or down-to-earth. So I understood why the ladies didn’t want to show up and secretly wished I had that option.
Before long, Deborah and I had grown so far apart that I was looking for a way out. She was sure I loved art and money but not so sure I loved her. I knew she loved God and our kids but was fairly certain she could just barely stand the sight of me. And so, in 1988, when I found myself in Beverly Hills, sharing wine with a beautiful blonde painter, I made a lot of excuses to myself on the way to a hotel room.
After a friend threatened to rat me out, I confessed. Deborah and I went to marriage counseling, and she forgave me. She also told me a truth about women’s hearts that I wish I could tattoo on the insides of every married man’s eyelids: “I know you’re an art dealer and that you love ranches and horses and longhorn steers and fancy cars. But what I don’t know about you is what’s in your heart. What you’re thinking when you look at me, when you hold me. Even if you’re thinking you don’t like me very much at that moment, I can deal with that. What I can’t deal with is not knowing your heart.”
Of course, that scared the crap out of me. Every man reading this knows his heart is a place so dangerous not even he feels safe going there. But I also knew that as much as I yearned to know my wife on an intimate physical level, she yearned for emotional and spiritual intimacy. Suddenly, I understood that just as sex—lots of it—was important to me, knowing me, experiencing my interior world, was important to her.
From then on, Deborah and I prayed together, usually lying together in bed. I would hold her in my arms, and she would know my heart according to my prayers. At first, I prayed about things I thought she’d want me to pray about: our marriage, the kids, the whole “Lord, we just want to thank You for who You are” kind of prayers that we sometimes pray because we want to sound hyperspiritual. But slowly, gradually, I began stripping off the layers of anonymity that shielded my heart from intruders, even my own wife.
Out loud, I told God I was afraid of what I felt was my wife’s superior spirituality. I told Him I resented her relationship with Him. I felt she loved Christ more than she loved me. Saying those things aloud then, and even writing them now, seems stupid. But they were real to me, and the results of my saying them were immediate. Deborah and I began connecting at a deep, spiritual level, drawing energy and life from each other like an unbroken circuit.
Deborah always treated my prayer attempts with understanding and was never condescending. I liked hearing the good things she said about me; they made me want to be even better. Meanwhile, she began adjusting her life in such a way that, without compromising her faith and integrity, she could make me feel the importance I wanted to feel in the relationship.
In the end, our prayer together was the key to the success of our marriage. That’s where we became intimate—“velcroed at the heart,” as we used to joke. Ironically, it was exactly what I wanted from the beginning. I just hadn’t known how to get there. Meanwhile, the deep joy of our physical intimacy was a direct result of the intimacy of our prayer.
During the final twelve years of our marriage, people used to ask me, “What’s your secret? What is it that you two have?”
I would reply, only half-joking, “I used to be down on my knees begging for sex. Now I’m down on my knees praying with my wife.”
7
Denver
It got to be the 1960s. All them years I worked for them plantations, the Man didn’t tell me there was colored schools I coulda gone to, or that I coulda learned a trade. He didn’t tell me I coulda joined the army and worked my way up, earned some money of my own and some respect. I didn’t know about World War II, the war in Korea, or the one in Vietnam. And I didn’t know colored folks had been risin up all around Louisiana for years, demandin better treatment.
I didn’t know I was different . . .
I knowed there was other places. I had heard my brother, Thurman, was out in California stackin hisself some paper money. So one day, I just decided to head out that way. Didn’t think about it much, just walked out to the railroad tracks and waited for the train to come a-rollin. There was another fella hangin around by the tracks, a hobo who’d been ridin the rails for a lotta years. He said he’d show me which train was goin to California.
I was about twenty-seven, twenty-eight years old by the time I wound up homeless in Fort Worth. Little children likes to say, “It takes one to know one!” So if you want to know about homeless folks, just ask me ’cause I was one of ’em for a whole lotta years.
Now, there ain’t no two ways about it: some homeless folks is just plain ol’, no-account lazy. I don’t mean to be bad-mouthin nobody, but that’s the truth.
On the other hand, though, there’s a whole lotta homeless that got that way ’cause they kept tryin and tryin, and no amount a’ tryin they done ever amounted to much. You can work a little pickup job for a day and make twenty or thirty dollars. But what you gon’ do with twenty or thirty dollars? Maybe you can rent you a room for the night or have a decent meal. But what you gon’ do after that?
Did you ever lose somethin or somebody you cared about? Somethin or somebody you really loved? I’m telling you what—if you did, you know that ain’t somethin you can get over real easy.
Like I couldn’t get rid of the pain when I watched my grandma, Big Mama, get burned to death in her shack. Or when that man ran outta the woods and stabbed my daddy to death. Or when my Aunt Etha, that was takin care a’ me after that, took sick and died. All them things happened when I was just a little-bitty boy.
Lotta homeless folks been hurt like that. And the hurt just hangs around you like a stray dog that smells a bone. You can’t never get rid of it unless you gets rid of the bone.
I always did believe in Jesus.
Most a’ the people on the streets know Jesus loves ’em. But they figure nobody else loves ’em but Jesus. Street people done heard more sermons than most preachers ever preached. Lotta good folks come ’round the ’hood, talkin ’bout Jesus this, Jesus that. Tellin us about Him is one thing . . . who gon’ stick around and show us Jesus? See, deliverin kindness ain’t the pastor’s job. That’s our job. When Jesus se
nt the disciples out two by two, He didn’t go with ’em. He stayed back and laid low, maybe had Hisself a cup a’ coffee.
Listen at this: Jesus sent the disciples out. John and Mark and Nathaniel and them went into the villages. When I was homeless, one thing I just couldn’t understand is why all these folks kept tryin to invitin me in someplace that I didn’t wanna be. They’d come out and hand me some kinda piece a’ paper, talkin ’bout, “Jesus loves you! Come fellowship with us!” Now, their hearts was in the right place, and they just tryin to show me the love a’ God. But seemed like they didn’t understand that it just ain’t that easy.
For one thing, them folks that invited me was all smilin and clean, and I was all ragged and dirty. ’Sides that, most a’ em was white, and I was black as a coffee bean. Wadn’t no way I was gon’ show up at their church lookin like I looked.
For another thing, where was I gon’ leave my bags with all my worldly goods, my blanket and my soap and my half-pint and what have you? It wadn’t much, but wadn’t no way I was gon’ leave it in the ’hood with all them fellas ready to split it up amongst themselves. And I was pretty sure they didn’t have no luggage check at the church.
Then they’d say, “God bless you!” and leave me with that piece a’ paper so I wouldn’t forget where I was s’posed to show up. ’Course, they didn’t know I couldn’t read.
See, we don’t need to be tryin to drag the homeless, or any kinda needy people, to “programs,” to “services.” What people needs is people.
And needy people don’t need no perfect people neither. When Jesus sent His disciples out, He sent Peter right along, knowin Peter had a bad temper and a potty mouth and was gon’ deny Him three times. He sent John and James even though they was full a’ pride and fightin over the best seat at the table. He even sent Judas, knowin Judas was gon’ betray Him. Even though Jesus knowed all a’ their sin and weakness, He sent ’em anyway.
Listen, if the devil ain’t messin with you, he’s already got you. If you is waitin to clean up your own life before you get out and help somebody else, you may as well take off your shoes and crawl back in the bed ’cause it ain’t never gon’ happen. Jesus don’t need no help from no perfect saints. If He did, He wouldn’t a’ gone up yonder and left us down here in charge.
ASHLEY
Heart Knowledge
By 2004, Matt and Ashley McNeeley’s marriage had followed a similar path to mine and Deborah’s—troubled and marred with adversity. Matt, then twenty-seven, was an alcoholic who had compromised the marriage. With their daughter only eighteen months old, Ashley, also twenty-seven, was desperate to keep her marriage from crumbling and set a low bar for her expectations. All she wanted was for Matt to be faithful and get sober.
“Once God got me out of the way,” Ashley says, “He did so much more.”
Matt not only got sober; he also began to lead the Celebrate Recovery program at the McNeeleys’ home church, Bent Tree Bible Fellowship in the Dallas suburb of Carrollton, Texas. And the couple’s marriage grew strong through their mutual commitment to each other and to their faith.
When Ashley read Same Kind at the insistence of her brother-in- law, Josh, she saw in Deborah a kindred spirit, a woman who had decided to ride out marital storms instead of abandoning ship—and who found peaceful waters on the other side. But the book also opened Ashley’s eyes to a void in her life.
Her marriage was going well. She was thriving professionally. With her sister, Jesse Ihde, she had launched Minerva Consulting, a small but successful marketing and communications consulting firm. But what was she doing to help those who were hungry and homeless and hurting?
“I told my family, we need to get involved,” she says. “We need to make a difference! We’re not doing anything.”
Through Josh’s passion and an uncle who lives in Phoenix, Ashley learned about a program called Open Table. The nonprofit started with a group of men at a Scottsdale, Arizona, church, who worked with youth groups serving at a local homeless shelter. These men realized that their interactions at the shelter weren’t really helping to break the cycle of homelessness. So they formed the group that would become Open Table, a community of mentors and life coaches who work with individuals and families, creating step-by-step economic stability and wholeness plans to help them get back on their feet.
“The goals are attained through an ongoing management process,” the Open Table Web site says, “as well as drawing on resources from the congregation, personal networks, and solutions already created by other Open Table groups.” Ashley learned that City of Phoenix officials were backing Open Table and heralding its methods as “best practices” for ending homelessness.
Ongoing management process?
Best practices?
Tackling a social issue through a carefully planned business-model approach seemed to Ashley and Jesse like an ideal fit for them. The sisters decided to launch an Open Table in the Dallas area, and they hit the ground running, creating a business plan, a marketing plan, and a prospectus. They recruited an influential advisor, made the right political connections in the city, and met with Open Table CEO Jon Katov.
Ashley had previous experience with nonprofits, having worked with Verizon on their cause-related marketing programs. She knew people on the boards of several foundations. She was certain she could tap into these connections without the slightest hiccup. “I thought, I’ve done this before. Money’s just going to fall into our laps, and this isn’t going to be any trouble at all. ”
That’s not how it went.
At first, every charity Ashley contacted expressed enthusiastic support. But the economic decline of late 2008 was taking its toll on nonprofit organizations, and enthusiasm did not translate into dollars. One by one, each of the board-member relationships Ashley had counted on to help launch Open Table failed to bear fruit. And with no money to pay for marketing and other aspects of their business plan, Ashley and Jesse were forced to shelve the project.
“I was very frustrated that I couldn’t get it going,” Ashley remembers. At the same time, though, a new realization hit her like cold water in the face. “We were pursuing Open Table with a businesslike model. We had a great handle on all the statistics, the economics of the situation, the demographics. We could really rattle off the numbers about homelessness, but we didn’t have heart knowledge about it.”
It became evident, Ashley says, that she and Jesse and the people they’d rallied to their cause had spent a lot of time talking about doing good in their community, but zero time actually doing anything. “We hadn’t spent a single minute with people in need. Finally, we thought, Let’s just go do it—go serve, and let God work it out.”
The first stop was the Union Gospel Mission, where Deborah and I first met Denver. Ashley toured the facility with Paul, a volunteer coordinator, and told him that Bent Tree Bible Fellowship would like to get involved.
“Where do you have a need?” Ashley asked.
“Well, we really need someone to hold children’s church,” Paul told her. He noted that the Union Gospel Mission focused on faith-based recovery and required adult program members to attend chapel. But it was often difficult for homeless parents to get anything out of chapel because they were too distracted managing their children.
“If that’s where you have a need, sign us up,” Ashley said.
“How many volunteers do you think you can get?” Paul asked.
In that moment, Ashley abandoned her business-plan/ Power Point/action-step instincts and simply jumped. “I have no idea,” she said with a grin. “But I can promise you that my husband, brother-in-law, sister, and parents will come.”
One Saturday each month, Bent Tree Bible Fellowship began holding children’s church for kids aged five to fourteen. The most appealing part, says Ashley, is that the volunteers brought their own children, not to serve but just to participate—singing, doing crafts, and learning Bible stories side by side with homeless kids. “Our hope is that we’re making our
own kids’ worlds just a little bit bigger.”
By June 2009, Bent Tree had provided so many volunteers that the Union Gospel Mission was able for the first time to open up a nursery one Saturday each month to care for children under age five. “Volunteers just kept walking in and walking in, until the coordinator said, ‘We’ve never had this many people before!’”
Ashley, planless and happy, just smiled. “Well, here we are!”
When Ashley was conducting her research to start Open Table, she began to understand the metrics of homelessness—that, yes, there are X number of homeless people and they’re homeless for reasons X, Y, and Z.
“But I didn’t recognize that these are people with stories and that any of us, all of us, could be there in an instant. The only way to learn that is to go do the work—to meet these people, to know them, to listen to their hearts,” Ashley says.
Since getting down to the street level on the issue, there is one point Ashley and Jesse have discussed repeatedly: once you’ve connected, once you’ve looked homelessness in the eye, once you know that hundreds of kids in your city go to sleep most nights without a roof over their heads, you have to make a choice either to do something or to consciously turn away.
“You can’t forget it, so you have to make a choice,” Ashley says. “My sister and I don’t think we’re doing anything close to important or close to enough. But it’s a start.”
8
Denver
In 1998, tired of the Park Cities, the Dallas rat race . . . we returned to Fort Worth. . . . We hadn’t been in [town] for more than a few days when Deborah spied an item in the Star-Telegram about homelessness in the city. The piece mentioned a place called the Union Gospel Mission. At the time, an insistent voice in Deborah’s heart told her it was a place she might fit . . .
